40-50 deg C

More than 50 deg C

Something else (please specify)

I'm asking this silly question as I have noticed a peculiar behavior with one of my machines (a new one).

Now that the summer is kicking in, the temp goes up as much as 55-57 deg C for the hotter of the two hard disks (the other was 50). So I took it to a shop, changed case, added 2 120mm fans, new PSU. Now, the temp is about 45 deg C (and 40 for the other).

Curiously, almost an identical machine 2 m away has temperatures about 5-8 deg C lower, although they run pretty much the same specs, same casing and same fans. Crazy, eh?

This could be ok - or not, I'm not sure. But I was wondering what your HDDs read.

Please state what your hardware specs are and in what climate you live.

P.S. I have also heard that some onboard chips lie about the temp, especially those on WD hard drives, which is the case here. What do you think of that?

A small bedroom with a window, but a sun does not shine inside at all.
60 GB HDD's temp is 45-50, room & outside temp is 30 C, no fans in PC.

It is true, that some chips provide inaccurate infomration about real temp.
Anyway a case with a front and an outside 120 mm fans is the best solution.
You could also buy a silencer and/or a cooler for a HDD as well like this or this.

These drives are in a drive cage within my Lian Li G70B full tower case. The Raptor is the first drive (when removing the left panel from the case). The last Seagate is warmer than the rest probably because it receives a little less airflow than the others from the 120mm front intake fan. Under load the temps increase about 2-4C.

Looking at the machine I'm using, 34C Maxtor, 39C WD. I installed an extra fan for if it gets too hot. I've read heat at over 50C can cause a loss of data and an extra way of cooling should be found above the 40s whether it is something like a casing fan or dedicated hard disk cooling.

Location comes into the equation especially here in the summer months with increased temp and dust which just leads to more increase in temp unless I get the canned air out and clean the fans.Ambient temperatures are also important for longevity, I've read between 60-75 Fahrenheit, as above this can be hard on the cooling, keeping the computer at a safe operating temp.

I have a 200 gigabyte Western Digital EIDE drive which is an almost constant 93 degrees Fahrenheit (33.88 Celsius).

My back up drive (80 gig Western digital) is unconnected unless I am making an image (I just open the case and reconnect it very fast {30 seconds or so}, this is to keep it electrically isolated and hopefully safer).

Room temp is 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.66 Celsius) as it if now fall (autumn) and the air conditioner is turned off.

The heat coming out of the power supply fan is 82 degrees Fahrenheit (27.7 Celsius), and the heat coming out of the added second case fan is 84 degrees Fahrenheit (28.8 Celsius). Both move 24 cubic feet per minute (cfm).

I also have a rigged added fan in the case blowing directly under the hard drive case (24cfm {which I added many ventilation holes with my drill press} ).

There is also a rigged internal fan blowing on the 2 ram PCI boards (12cfm).

The CPU has a better aluminum 34 cfm model which replaced a tiny factory fan that was a 1/3 the cfm.

To help cool the case better I added a front mounted fan pushing in outside air (push-pull concept) from the space where a 2nd cd bay usually is (cost only $8.99 US, made to fit the bay by the manufacture {24 cfm}).

The temperatures from the fans come from my electronic digital multimeter with a temperature probe (very accurate I believe).

The temperature for the hard drive comes from a utility.

I added the fan info because it directly effects the hard drive temperature.

My new Seagate SATA \300 drive runs hotter than the original drive which is a Samsung SATA \300. Here in Hawaii, very few homes are air conditioned. It is usually around 80 degrees Fahrenheit all the time day and night inside this concrete building. The humidity is very high all the time also. There are two processor fans and two power supply fans but SpeedFan can only detect the video card fan which just dramatically sped up ...it is loud now...usually very quiet. The new Seagate drive is 320MB and the Samsung is 160MB. The Samsung usually runs about 5 degrees cooler than the Seagate but at the moment they are close together in temp. The Seagate stays at 48-49 C. The video card temp has just dropped from 54 to 50C with the big speed up in its fan.

The screen shot is of SpeedFan but nVidia shows the temp on the classic control panel but if you use the new control panel you have download nTune to see the temp. Earlier versions of SpeedFan did not show the temp of the video card. But this latest version does, plus, the author fixed the earlier version that killed nVidia taskbar transparency.

I don't really know, my motherboard has alot of software and I know that one of them measures temperatures of several components, but those softwares are ballast on my computer and I'm only curious when something feels wrong.

I always can install these softwares in a separate image and restore that image if I want to know something about temperatures.

The screen shot is of SpeedFan but nVidia shows the temp on the classic control panel but if you use the new control panel you have download nTune to see the temp. Earlier versions of SpeedFan did not show the temp of the video card. But this latest version does, plus, the author fixed the earlier version that killed nVidia taskbar transparency.

so I guess it only works with Nvidia ? I have matrox and ATI cards. As I have no interest in 3d I only use cards without noisy little fans. Drives run in the 20's and
30's (old machine) CPU's run in the 30's when idle and 40's when working hard.
I don't think the graphics cards will be all that hot but would be interesting to check.

Please excuse my ignorance but could someone tell me how to tell the temperature of my hard drive. It seems that at one time I had a program that told the temperature of my CPU but it has been so long ago I do not remember. Any replies will be appreciated. Thanking you in advance.

Please excuse my ignorance but could someone tell me how to tell the temperature of my hard drive. It seems that at one time I had a program that told the temperature of my CPU but it has been so long ago I do not remember. Any replies will be appreciated. Thanking you in advance.

Please excuse my ignorance but could someone tell me how to tell the temperature of my hard drive. It seems that at one time I had a program that told the temperature of my CPU but it has been so long ago I do not remember. Any replies will be appreciated. Thanking you in advance.

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SpeedFan (but Everest is good too) as it will tell you more and depending on the mobo, etc. allow you to adjust fan speeds. SpeedFan is free.http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

SIW can also tell you and it just had an update to a new version. It's free and is a utility everyone should have.

I can monitor these temps (and fan speed) real time at my Logitech G15 LED.

Edit:
A few years ago (winter 2005) I forgot to turn up the heat and left my Window open. As you can imagine it became quite cold in my room. When I booted my PC and started a monitoring program, it said my Hard drive was only 6*C (42*F!).